Monday, July 11, 1994...Burnt Tutti Fruiti

Unique things occur when a house is full of many people.

Sunday morning I was preparing to iron my dress. The iron needed water. How convenient...a glass of water on my dresser. I poured it in.

But. It was not water.

It was pink grapefruit juice. And I'd poured the whole works into that poor, unsuspecting hunk of iron. The stuff had been lurking there in an orange glass, smugly camouflaging itself, chuckling evilly.

Did you know that when you iron your dress with pink grapefruit juice, you go to church smelling like Tutti Fruiti?

Burnt Tutti Fruiti.

But life goes on.

Family Thrift has a row of little children’s carts beside their big carts. Friday nights are our big grocery shopping nights. Everybody goes, so as to pick out an item he’s been simply drooling for. (Within reason.) Hester and Lydia push little carts, and we fill them up with some of the less heavy items.

Do you know how it feels to stand in the middle of the Indianapolis Speedway during the Championship Race? That’s how it feels, trying to get your groceries while two short-stuffs are helpfully tailing your every move.

Last night there were thunderstorms all around, with hail and tornadoes. During supper, the sky suddenly went coal black. I mean, pitch black. Like ink. Middle-of-the-night-black.
We fled for the basement, our mouths full of Mexican pizza. (Let me tell you, that pizza was good.) We chewed, swallowed, looked at each other, and rushed back up the stairs en masse for the pizza.

By then the sky had lightened to a dark pine green, and, since the weatherman didn’t seem unduly concerned (although he does hide out in the basement of the courthouse, and probably has no more idea than a goldfish what the sky actually looks like), and, since the pizza was really good, we sat back down and ate.

Pretty soon the western sky turned bright yellow, and Hester said, “Well, I declare! The sun’s coming back up!”

Lydia and Hester got some boxes of sidewalk chalk for their birthdays. Now the sidewalks around this neck of the woods are stornry (a la Tigger, of Winnie-the-Pooh fame) colorful.

Last evening a baby blackbird was strutting around, pecking up seed under our bird feeder. His parents were nearby. He got himself a little too far off the beaten track and ended up on the far side of our shiny black basketball pole. He turned around, spotted the black pole, and thought it was his mother. (They don’t call ’em bird brains for nothin’.) So he proceeded to hunker down, trying to look like a wee baby birdie, spread his wings out awkwardly, opened his mouth wide, and squawked his head off.

Apparently thinking his mother (the pole) had her back to him, he kept tilting far to the side, trying to see her head, mouth agape, still squawking. After many minutes of this, during which Teddy and Joseph, equipped with binoculars, were in great stages of mirth over this baby bird blunder, the little creature tipped over so far that he finally noticed his parents on the other side of the pole, whereupon he gathered himself quickly together and jerk-walked to their location, where he again begged loudly for food. The poor parents could hardly eat without being pestered silly by their pig of an offspring, who looked to be quite capable of feeding himself. But every now and then they obliged the little noise-maker, cramming a few seeds into his gaping mouth (right down to his tonsils, it looked like) (do birds have tonsils?), to shut him up as much as for any other reason, I think.

Lydia turned three on the 25th of June. We gave her a Li’l Tykes playhouse, along with the family of little people, the miniature table and chairs, party kitchen, doll buggy, cradle, infant seat, high chair, yard toys, slide, cozy coupe (just like her own big one), picnic table, baby swing (just like Caleb’s); and the van, with a family, including a baby in a car seat. Was she ever delighted. Joseph, Hester, and Caleb think it’s pretty neat, too.

That afternoon, our dryer downstairs buzzed, and Dorcas went off to get the clothes. Lydia, who seemed so busy with her house as to be oblivious to all else, promptly jerked the girl doll out of the upstairs bathtub and marched her down the staircase.

“Gotta get the clothes!!” she advised the doll, and set about pulling small bits of cloth out of her miniature dryer.

Teddy is busy putting together miniature wooden furniture. As they say in Wales, it’s “right up his street”. He’s made a cute little chest of drawers, an adorable little cupboard, and a bureau.

Last week I sewed Caleb four new pairs of pj’s and two pairs of pants, a prairie skirt for Hannah, and made a ruffled pad for Caleb’s baby seat, which turned out extremely cute in spite of my dreadfully wobbly stitching (it was the fault of the fabric, of course). I’m working on Thanksgiving and Christmas clothes now. Besides feeling quite economical and saving when I make all these things, the fact is, I just plain like to sew.

Larry even got into the act by fastening the pad back into the seat, and putting snaps on the pj’s for me. I reciprocated by picking out the colors for the pickup he was working on, after which he paid not the slightest notice and picked his own colors. (I have to admit, his choice looked better than mine.)

We had a HOT Fourth-of-July picnic. But I got many excellent pictures. I especially like taking pictures of the children, getting double prints, and putting them in the parents’ Christmas cards.
That evening, we went to Grand Island to watch a spectacular display of fireworks. As we went speeding around a curve, a small lake on one side, we hit a big bump which flew us quickly to the moon and then rapidly to China, if indeed China is still straight down.

Lydia popped up and stared wide-eyed out the window. “Whooo!” she remarked. “We just about swimmed in the water!”

We have a little squirrel in our back yard that is quite tame. Lydia wondered, after watching it scampering about playing, “Do they call them ‘squirrels’ because they act so squirrelly?”

I have a Jr. Choir; there are about 40 children, and we practice singing every Friday evening. We've had Jr. Choir (ages 8-12) for eleven years. We sing at Old Folk’s homes; we have Secret Pals--each child chooses an elderly or infirm person on whom to bestow all sorts of pleasant surprises (poems, artwork, flowers, food, pictures, etc.); we have summer picnics and winter parties; play games; and sing, sing, sing. In short, we have loads of fun.